Global phase diagram of a spin–orbit-coupled Kondo lattice model on the honeycomb lattice

Motivated by the growing interest in the novel quantum phases in materials with strong electron correlations and spin–orbit coupling, we study the interplay among the spin–orbit coupling, Kondo interaction, and magnetic frustration of a Kondo lattice model on a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice.We calculate the renormalized electronic structure and correlation functions at the saddle point based on a fermionic representation of the spin operators.We find a global phase diagram of the model at half-filling, which contains a variety of phases due to the competing interactions.In addition to a Kondo insulator, there is a topological insulator with valence bond solid correlations in the spin sector, and two antiferromagnetic phases.Due to the competition between the spin–orbit coupling and Kondo interaction, the direction of the magnetic moments in the antiferromagnetic phases can be either within or perpendicular to the lattice plane.The latter antiferromagnetic state is topologically nontrivial for moderate and strong spin–orbit couplings.     

Spin–orbit coupled Bose–Einstein condensates with Rydberg-dressing interaction

Interaction between Rydberg atoms can be used to control the properties of interatomic interaction in ultracold gases by weakly dressing the atoms with a Rydberg state. Here we investigate the effect of the Rydberg-dressing interaction on the ground-state properties of a Bose–Einstein condensate imposed by Raman-induced spin–orbit coupling. We find that,in the case of SU(2)-invariant s-wave interactions, the gas is only in the plane-wave phase and the zero-momentum phase is absent. In particular, we also predict an unexpected magnetic stripe phase composed of two plane-wave components with unequal weight when s-wave interactions are non-symmetric, which originates from the Rydberg-dressing interaction.     

Polaron and molecular states of a spin–orbit coupled impurity in a spinless Fermi sea

We investigate the polaron and molecular states of a fermionic atom with one-dimensional spin–orbit coupling(SOC)coupled to a three-dimensional spinless Fermi sea. Because of the interplay among the SOC, Raman coupling and spinselected interatomic interactions, the polaron state induced by the spin–orbit coupled impurity exhibits quite unique features. We find that the energy dispersion of the polaron generally has a double-minimum structure, which results in a finite center-of-mass(c.m.) momentum in the ground state, different from the zero-momentum polarons where SOC are introduced into the majority atoms. By further tuning the parameters such as the atomic interaction strength, a discontinuous transition between the polarons with different c.m. momenta may occur, signaled by the singular behavior of the quasiparticle residue and effective mass of the polaron. Meanwhile, the molecular state as well as the polaron-to-molecule transition is also strongly affected by the Raman coupling and the effective Zeeman field, which are introduced by the lasers generating SOC on the impurity atom. We also discuss the effects of a more general spin-dependent interaction and mass ratio. These results would be beneficial for the study of impurity physics brought by SOC.     

Floquet topological phase transition in two-dimensional quadratic band crossing system

We investigate the Hall effects of quadratic band crossing(QBC) fermions in a square optical lattice with spin–orbit coupling and orbital Zeeman term. We find that the orbital Zeeman term and shaking play critical roles in the systems,which can drive a topological transition from spin Hall phases to anomalous Hall phase with nonvanishing(spin) Chern numbers. Due to the interplay among the orbital Zeeman term, spin–orbit coupling, and the shaking, the phase diagram of the system exhibits rich phases, which are characterized by Chern number.     

Spin–orbit-coupled spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates confined in radially periodic potential

We investigate the ground states of spin-1 Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) with spin–orbit coupling in a radiallyperiodic potential by numerically solving the coupled Gross–Pitaevskii equations. In the radially periodic potential, wefirst demonstrate that spin–orbit-coupled antiferromagnetic BECs support a multiring petal phase. Polar–core vortex canbe observed from phase profiles, which is manifested as circularly symmetric distribution. We further show that spin–orbitcoupling can induce multiring soliton structure in ferromagnetic BECs. It is confirmed especially that the wave-functionphase of the ring corresponding to uniform distribution satisfies the rotational symmetry, and the wave-function phase ofthe ring corresponding to partial splitting breaks the rotational symmetry. Adjusting the spin–orbit coupling strength cancontrol the number of petal in antiferromagnetic BECs and the winding numbers of wave-function in ferromagnetic BECs.Finally, we discuss effects of spin-independent and spin-dependent interactions on the ground states.     

Antiferromagnetic and topological states in silicene:A mean field study

It has been widely accepted that silicene is a topological insulator, and its gap closes first and then opens again with increasing electric field, which indicates a topological phase transition from the quantum spin Hall state to the band insulator state. However, due to the relatively large atomic spacing of silicene, which reduces the bandwidth, the electron–electron interaction in this system is considerably strong and cannot be ignored. The Hubbard interaction, intrinsic spin orbital coupling(SOC), and electric field are taken into consideration in our tight-binding model, with which the phase diagram of silicene is carefully investigated on the mean field level. We have found that when the magnitudes of the two mass terms produced by the Hubbard interaction and electric potential are close to each other, the intrinsic SOC flips the sign of the mass term at either K or K for one spin and leads to the emergence of the spin-polarized quantum anomalous Hall state.     

Enhancing von Neumann entropy by chaos in spin–orbit entanglement

For a quantum system with multiple degrees of freedom or subspaces, loss of coherence in a certain subspace is intimately related to the enhancement of entanglement between this subspace and another one. We investigate intra-particle entanglement in two-dimensional mesoscopic systems, where an electron has both spin and orbital degrees of freedom and the interaction between them is enabled by Rashba type of spin–orbit coupling. The geometric shape of the scattering region can be adjusted to produce a continuous spectrum of classical dynamics with different degree of chaos. Focusing on the spin degree of freedom in the weak spin–orbit coupling regime, we find that classical chaos can significantly enhance spin–orbit entanglement at the expense of spin coherence. Our finding that classical chaos can be beneficial to intra-particle entanglement may have potential applications such as enhancing the bandwidth of quantum communications.     

SU(3) spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensate confined in a harmonic plus quartic trap

We consider a SU(3) spin–orbit coupled Bose–Einstein condensate confined in a harmonic plus quartic trap.The ground-state wave functions of such a system are obtained by minimizing the Gross–Pitaevskii energy functional, and the effects of the spin-dependent interaction and spin–orbit coupling are investigated in detail.For the case of ferromagnetic spin interaction, the SU(3) spin–orbit coupling induces a threefold-degenerate plane wave ground state with nontrivial spin texture.For the case of antiferromagnetic spin interaction, the system shows phase separation for weak SU(3) spin–orbit coupling, where three discrete minima with unequal weights in momentum space are selected, while hexagonal honeycomb lattice structure for strong SU(3) SOC, where three discrete minima with equal weights are selected.     

Spin transport properties of a Dresselhaus-polygonal quantum ring

We propose a theoretical method to investigate the effect of the Dresselhaus spin–orbit coupling(DSOC) on the spin transport properties of a regular polygonal quantum ring with an arbitrary number of segments. We find that the DSOC can break the time reversal symmetry of the spin conductance in a polygonal ring and that this property can be used to reverse the spin direction of electrons in the polygon with the result that a pure spin up or pure spin down conductance can be obtained by exchanging the source and the drain. When the DSOC is considered in a polygonal ring with Rashba spin–orbit coupling(RSOC) with symmetric attachment of the leads, the total conductance is independent of the number of segments when both of the two types of spin–orbit coupling(SOC) have the same value. However, the interaction of the two types of SOC results in an anisotropic and shape-dependent conductance in a polygonal ring with asymmetric attachment of the leads. The method we proposed to solve for the spin conductance of a polygon can be generalized to the circular model.     

Two-body exceptional points in open dissipative systems

We study two-body non-Hermitian physics in the context of an open dissipative system depicted by the Lindblad master equation.Adopting a minimal lattice model of a handful of interacting fermions with single-particle dissipation,we show that the non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian of the master equation gives rise to two-body scattering states with state-and interaction-dependent parity-time transition.The resulting two-body exceptional points can be extracted from the trace-preserving density-matrix dynamics of the same dissipative system with three atoms.Our results not only demonstrate the interplay of parity-time symmetry and interaction on the exact few-body level,but also serve as a minimal illustration on how key features of non-Hermitian few-body physics can be probed in an open dissipative many-body system.     

Mean-field dynamics of spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the interaction between the spin and momentum of a quantum particle, is crucial for many important condensed matter phenomena. The recent experimental realization of SOC in neutral bosonic cold atoms provides a new and ideal platform for investigating spin-orbit coupled quantum many-body physics. In this Letter, we derive a generic Gross-Pitaevskii equation as the starting point for the study of many-body dynamics in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates. We show that different laser setups for realizing the same SOC may lead to different mean-field dynamics. Various ground state phases (stripe, phase separation, etc.) of the condensate are found in different parameter regions. A new oscillation period induced by the SOC, similar to the Zitterbewegung oscillation, is found in the center-of-mass motion of the condensate.     

Phase diagram and critical exponents of a dissipative Ising spin chain in a transverse magnetic field

We consider a one-dimensional Ising model in a transverse magnetic field coupled to a dissipative heat bath. The phase diagram and the critical exponents are determined from extensive Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that the character of the quantum phase transition is radically altered from the corresponding nondissipative model and the double well coupled to a dissipative heat bath with linear friction. Spatial couplings and the dissipative dynamics combine to form a new quantum criticality which is independent of dissipation strength.     

SU(3) spin-orbit coupled fermions in an optical lattice

We propose a scheme to realize the SU(3)spin-orbit coupled three-component fermions in an one-dimensional optical lattice.The topological properties of the single-particle Hamiltonian are studied by calculating the Berry phase,winding number and edge state.We also investigate the effects of the interaction on the ground-state topology of the system,and characterize the interaction-induced topological phase transitions,using a state-of-the-art density-matrix renormalization-group numerical method.Finally,we show the typical features of the emerging quantum phases,and map out the many-body phase diagram between the interaction and the Zeeman field.Our results establish a way for exploring novel quantum physics induced by the SOC with SU(N)symmetry.     

Application of non-Hermitian Hamiltonian model in open quantum optical systems

Non-Hermitian systems have observed numerous novel phenomena and might lead to various applications. Unlike standard quantum physics, the conservation of energy guaranteed by the closed system is broken in the non-Hermitian system, and the energy can be exchanged between the system and the environment. Here we present a scheme for simulating the dissipative phase transition with an open quantum optical system. The competition between the coherent interaction and dissipation leads to the second-order phase transition. Furthermore, the quantum correlation in terms of squeezing is studied around the critical point. Our work may provide a new route to explore the non-Hermitian quantum physics with feasible techniques in experiments.     

Tuning the tricritical point with spin-orbit coupling in polarized fermionic condensates

We investigate a two-component atomic Fermi gas with population imbalance in the presence of Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC). As a competition between SOC and population imbalance, the finite-temperature phase diagram reveals a large variety of new features, including the expanding of the superfluid state regime and the shrinking of both the phase separation and the normal regimes. For sufficiently strong SOC, the phase separation region disappears, giving way to the superfluid state. We find that the tricritical point moves toward a regime of low temperature, high magnetic field, and high polarization as the SOC increases.     

Stability of spin-orbit coupled Fermi gases with population imbalance

We use the self-consistent mean-field theory to analyze the effects of Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the ground-state phase diagram of population-imbalanced Fermi gases throughout the BCS-Bose-Einstein condensate evolution. We find that the SOC and population imbalance are counteracting, and that this competition tends to stabilize the uniform superfluid phase against the phase separation. However, we also show that the SOC stabilizes (destabilizes) the uniform superfluid phase against the normal phase for low (high) population imbalances. In addition, we find topological quantum phase transitions associated with the appearance of momentum-space regions with zero quasiparticle energies, and study their signatures in the momentum distribution.     

Exceptional points in a microwave billiard with time-reversal invariance violation

We report on the experimental study of an exceptional point (EP) in a dissipative microwave billiard with induced time-reversal invariance (T) violation. The associated two-state Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian and nonsymmetric. It is determined experimentally on a narrow grid in a parameter plane around the EP. At the EP the size of T violation is given by the relative phase of the eigenvector components. The eigenvectors are adiabatically transported around the EP, whereupon they gather geometric phases and in addition geometric amplitudes different from unity.     

Complex energy plane and topological invariant in non-Hermitian systems

Non-Hermitian systems as theoretical models of open or dissipative systems exhibit rich novel physical properties and fundamental issues in condensed matter physics. We propose a generalized local–global correspondence between the pseudo-boundary states in the complex energy plane and topological invariants of quantum states. We find that the patterns of the pseudo-boundary states in the complex energy plane mapped to the Brillouin zone are topological invariants against the parameter deformation. We demonstrate this approach by the non-Hermitian Chern insulator model. We give the consistent topological phases obtained from the Chern number and vorticity. We also find some novel topological invariants embedded in the topological phases of the Chern insulator model, which enrich the phase diagram of the non-Hermitian Chern insulators model beyond that predicted by the Chern number and vorticity. We also propose a generalized vorticity and its flipping index to understand physics behind this novel local–global correspondence and discuss the relationships between the local–global correspondence and the Chern number as well as the transformation between the Brillouin zone and the complex energy plane. These novel approaches provide insights to how topological invariants may be obtained from local information as well as the global property of quantum states, which is expected to be applicable in more generic non-Hermitian systems.